The Phoenix Prince

by Kristen Gupton

  “He has, you know my father well enough,” the guard replied. Jerris didn’t meet Keiran’s gaze, instead looking toward the fire. Like Corina earlier, their conversation about slipping Keiran human blood wandered through his mind. He wondered if the old woman realized he wasn’t entirely joking about it or not.

  “Besides, as badly as my father treated me, his only goal was to see a Sipesh on the throne indefinitely. I’m fairly certain that there was no grand scheme to off me after his death. Peirte would have needed to orchestrate that on his own. I just don’t feel terribly threatened if I keep right where I am for the next few days.”

  Keiran closed his eyes and had another drink. Though he’d not really ingested that much alcohol over the course of the day, he was feeling it full force. Whatever Corina had slipped him earlier had never really worn off, and now he was well on his way to being officially drunk.

  “And you can stay here, sure, until the cremation day, but then you have to go into town to the cathedral,” Jerris pointed out.

  “And I will be surrounded by dozens of people at that time.”

  “Then the hunt.”

  Keiran nodded slightly, giving the bottle back to his friend. “That will be done with you and the usual hunting party of guards. I trust all of them, don’t you?”

  “I do, but Peirte surely saved up a good amount of gold over the years. Enough of that and a lot of men can be tempted.” Jerris saw that Keiran had already downed over a half of the bottle. He gave the prince a quick, disapproving glance before having several swallows for himself.

  “If you think any of those men are in any danger of being bought off,” Keiran growled, jaw tensing. “We’ve all been friends for a long time. I know I’m the prince, and they were hired to go on the hunts with me, but damn it, I always felt like we were a closer group than the situation alone dictated.”

  “We are, Keir. You’ve always treated us as equals. I don’t honestly feel that any of us could be corrupted like that, it was just a hypothetical situation.”

  “Very well,” he sighed, closing his eyes again. “And for the record, if I ever started to become arrogant and conceited like my father, you have the authority to tell me so.”

  “Keir, if you become like your father and I say that, my head will be on a stake out along the road or worse.” The red-haired man grimaced and leaned over to set the bottle on the floor. “You know what they say about power, but by God, none of us want you to change like that. Tales of good and compassionate kings are sadly far and few between anymore.”

  “Just like tales of good and compassionate vampires, eh? Let’s hope I can change that,” Keiran said, slumping down further into his chair, mind drifting from the alcohol.

  Jerris simply fell quiet and watched him, deciding that the best way to make sure Keiran made it through to his coronation was to stay right next to him and remain alert. The young guard knew that if it came down to it, he’d willingly put his life on the line for Keiran and the country they lived in.

  It wasn’t long before Keiran had slipped completely from consciousness. Jerris shook his head and got up slowly. There had been a time when Keiran had been the last one standing after a night of drinking. Now, the prince was gone long before Jerris was even really feeling it. He didn’t like it at all. It was hard to watch his friend worsening day by day.

  Carefully, Jerris went over and hoisted Keiran up, leading him to the bed and getting him put down. The act didn’t take near as much effort as it would have in the past. Keiran was much lighter than he used to be. It was enough of a difference that Jerris could tell, anyway.

  After drawing a blanket over the unconscious prince, Jerris went back to the chairs before the fire, retaking his seat. He forced himself to stay awake, and he sat there thinking. How Keiran was going to manage becoming the king in his current state worried him, and he knew it worried plenty of others, too. If he ended up basically starving himself to death, who would lead Tordania?

  * * *

  When Peirte returned to the castle, he’d gone straight to his quarters and locked himself within. He only paused long enough to inform the servants that he was absolutely not to be disturbed for the rest of the evening. None of them would have, anyway.

  He opened up one of the many locked cabinets he had inside his room and pulled out a few heavy books, dropping them onto his desk. Others were never allowed in his room, so no one knew what he owned. These books were strictly forbidden by the country’s laws, as all of them had to do with demon summoning. They were covered in assorted runes and intricately tooled leather bindings. Several even sported locks on them—not to keep unwanted eyes from reading, but perhaps to keep things inside.

  Satisfied with the pile he’d made, he lit a few candles on the desk and then sat down. Peirte was well versed in all of the books he owned, but many of them had slight variations on ways to achieve certain things. He tended to pull a little from each of the different the books, mixing the techniques to his liking.

  Due to his past success, he felt he was up to something he’d not tried before. Peirte tended to be confident, but he wasn’t honestly all-powerful. Though he did possess a good degree of ability, there were very real limits to what he could do. The fact that Prince Keiran had survived to adulthood proved that squarely.

  He’d tried assorted minor possessions and poisons on the prince over the years. While he had managed to make Keiran legitimately ill a few times, the vampirism helped pull him through without any obvious long-term side effects. Killing him would most certainly have to involve something much more hands-on and definite than just magic, but it was still going to be part of the equation.

  Determined to set in motion the greatest attempt at demon summoning he’d ever done, Peirte spent hours studying his books. He was entering into unknown territory, into the type of demon work that could easily cost him his own life if he misstepped at all. If this was to be his last attempt to usurp Keiran, then he was going to give it everything he could muster.

  After getting the evening’s ritual planned out, he started to scribble furiously on a sheet of parchment, muttering incoherently to himself all the while. He sat back and looked at the symbol he’d drawn, reassuring himself that all the proper sigils and runes were contained in the design. Though he made a few small revisions, he was pleased with it before long.

  Peirte rose up and went back to his cabinets. From inside, he pulled out a lump of charcoal and an empty glass bottle. The bottle was one of the items he’d taken from the witch whom he’d learned demon evocation from. She’d told him it was a vessel for capturing and containing demons, and not the nonphysical types that he’d toyed with before. It was a containment bottle for a familiar; a type of demon that could take on any desired physical form and follow the orders of the one summoning it. This was terribly dangerous magic, and one had to be meticulous about all the steps in the process. Familiars in their world had an unfortunate tendency to turn on their summoner and kill them if they didn’t prove strong enough to control them properly.

  He set the bottle in the center of his floor, before getting down onto his hands and knees. For the next three hours, he drew the sigils and runes he’d designed earlier onto the floor. He worked outward from the center slowly, carefully reproducing the image from the parchment on a larger scale.

  By the time he was done, his knees and hands were bloodied from crawling on the rough stone floor for so long, but he felt no pain. His mind was wrapped up in the thought of what he was about to do. Peirte was obsessed with his work involving demons, and the prospect of going another step higher and doing something new had completely seduced him.

  Sweating profusely despite the definite chill in the air, Peirte stripped off his robes until he was naked. He stared down at the bottle that sat in the middle of the floor, a cork hanging by a string from the neck of it. After one last inspection of the seal he’d drawn, he went to kneel in the assigned place within the design. The storm outside was worsening, and it ad
ded a charge to the air. This made the madman smile. It would only make him that much more effective in what he was about to do.

  He closed his eyes and held his hands out to his sides. Peirte started to recite a long ago memorized, but never before used, recitation of summoning. There were seventeen verses in the spell, all of which he got through flawlessly. With each passage, the design on the floor started to change from the black of the charcoal to a sickly, radiant green. The symbols within the different rings of the design started to move, each band of the design alternating in direction. The sound of faint and distance voices mixed with the noises of the storm raging outside. Within the room, the temperature dropped significantly, as all the ambient energy in the air was channelled into his magic.

  A white fog swept up from the floor in the center of the design. The vapor shifted and writhed, possessing no specific form yet.

  Peirte dared to open his eyes, seeing the mist rise. With evidence that his magic was working, his heart rate doubled. He was pulling up a demon far more powerful than any he had ever evoked. There was an ecstatic smile on his lips from the thrill of it.

  The vapor swirled in some unseen vortex around the bottle, slowly creeping up higher until it was drawn within the glass vessel. Once the last traces of the fog were contained inside the confines of the bottle, the cork swung up and sealed it off. All at once, the green illumination in the design around him faded, the design turning black once again. As the room fell still and silent, there was nothing more on the floor than a charcoal drawing.

  Though his legs shook and he was unsteady, Peirte rose up from where he’d knelt. He went to the center of the room and picked up the bottle. The interior looked like it was full of steam that intermittently condensed and dripped down the glass. The bottle was hot to the touch, all of the previous energy from the room having been focused into it. Within, there were faint pulses of an eerie white light, and the subtle hint of something moving around.

  He hugged the bottle to his chest and carried it to a cabinet, before setting it lovingly inside and locking the door. He had his familiar and couldn’t wait to set it loose to lure the damned vampire to his death with. Though the demon probably had the strength to kill Keiran outright, Peirte wanted the actual death blow to the vampire done by human hands. Leaving any obvious trace of a demon or magic wasn’t something he wanted. The assassination had to look mundane as far as murder went.

  Though he was known as an exorcist after his work with the church, having a demon observed killing the prince might make some wonder. People were always looking to make leaps in logic in that way. Few could control a demon to do such a thing, but anyone could hire an assassin. The bigger the possible number of suspects for what was to befall Keiran, the better for the councillor.

  Exhausted, Peirte swept the floor quickly to destroy the design he’d made. When he was finished with that, he collapsed onto his bed and fell into a fitful sleep. By the time he finally awoke, the sun had risen again and the storm had run its course. He felt ill from the massive expenditure of energy the night before. Still, he couldn’t help but smile, going over to check that his bottle was still corked and in the cabinet before he dressed.

  He went downstairs and immediately called for his carriage to take him into town. There was someone that he needed to visit to get the trap set.

  * * *

  The coach driver pulled the carriage to a stop outside of a small cabin on the very edge of town, not too far away from the castle itself. It was a mercifully short trip for Peirte. He was in no condition to ride along the cobbled and uncomfortable roads for any great length of time.

  It was a pleasant enough house, even if small. Out in front, a man was hoisting a dead boar up onto a truss to be cleaned and butchered for market. He looked up as the carriage rolled to a stop, wondering who it was paying him a visit. He tied the pig’s carcass in place, and then wiped his hands on his trousers. He was a typical, burly Tordanian man, sporting a full beard and a tangled mess of long, brown hair.

  The grand councillor moved out of the carriage, once again not waiting for the driver to open the door. He fluidly strode toward the man, studying him intently, as the distance closed between them.

  “Ivan, I have a very important business matter to discuss with you. Perhaps we can go inside to have a bit of privacy?”

  Ivan pursed his lips for a moment, inspecting Peirte. He crossed his arms over his chest, looking down on the smaller man. He had a wild and unkept appearance, making him look the part of a mountain man and hunter. “We can go inside, Councillor, though I can’t imagine what use you have for me.”

  Peirte brushed the comment off for the moment and headed straight to the door of the cabin. The interior was just a simple, one room affair, and he went to sit at a chair that rested next to a rough-hewn table in the middle of the space.

  Ivan followed and closed the door, locking it. He sat opposite the other man, resting his elbows on the table. “Now, what is this all about?”

  “I have a task for you,” Peirte said, untying a small bag from his belt. He held it in his hands on top of the table, locking gazes with Ivan. “You were King Turis Lee’s huntsman. You know the surrounding forest better than anyone, I would imagine.”

  “True,” Ivan agreed.

  “As you know, there is a hunt that the prince is obligated to go on before the coronation. I’d like to ask you to do me a favor and go on a scouting trip before this so that you can point him in the right direction.” Peirte kept his expression absolutely neutral, not wanting to give the man any cues to work off of. He was curious what the huntsman’s reaction would be.

  The large man growled quietly in his throat and slapped a hand onto the table’s surface. “I used to make good money hunting deer for the king’s table before he started letting that son of his do all the hunting. That prince cost me my job, and I don’t honestly feel obligated to help him out. I’m sorry, Peirte, but I have to decline. Let him find his own deer. All that damn vampire does is go out there to slit their throats to drink their blood, anyway. It’s sick.”

  Peirte fought back a smile. This wasn’t quite the reaction he’d been expecting, but it served his purposes well enough. He wasn’t disappointed in the least. “Ah, well, Ivan, I plan to make up for some of that lost income, if you do this one little thing for me.”

  With that, Peirte opened the bag he’d been holding and upended it, dropping several gold coins onto the table. Ivan’s eyes widened and a hand moved forward, dragging one of the coins over so he could inspect it.

  The councillor let his smile come forward a little, watching the greed in Ivan’s eyes. “Now that I have your attention, let me tell you what I need you to do.”

  Ivan lowered the coin for a moment and gave Peirte a weary expression. “Aye, you have my attention.”

  “I want you to go out near the old Maris Trading Post. I’m sure if you look around there, you will find a very specific deer to report to the prince about.” Peirte put a hand on the rest of the gold and shoved it toward Ivan. “When you come home from telling Keiran that, you will find ten times this amount under your bed.”

  Ivan gave Peirte the critical eye, leaning forward on the table. “All the way out there? These woods are full of deer, surely Keiran would never feel the need to go out that far for a stag, Councillor.”

  Peirte licked his lips and narrowed his eyes, lowering his voice. “There are stags around, plenty, I’m sure, but you will see a white one out there. That is what you need to direct Keiran to.”

  “A white stag? You intend to lure him out there with that stupid legend of Tordania’s greatest king bringing in a white stag during his hunt? Peirte, there hasn’t been a white stag seen in this country in at least a hundred years. You don’t intend to have me go all the way out there only to come back and lie about seeing one, do you? I may not like the prince at all, but I don’t make a habit of lying for money.” Ivan leaned back, crossing his arms over his chest again.

 
“There is a white stag out there, Ivan.” Peirte smoothed his hands across the table’s top, meeting Ivan’s questioning gaze. “Call it a vision of mine, if you will. One given to me by God Almighty himself. There will be a white stag out there. What have you got to lose? I’ve already given you more gold there than I’m willing to bet you make in five years.”

  Ivan knew that Peirte had been a priest at one point, and maybe the man did have legitimate godly revelations. Then again, maybe the man just ate the wrong kinds of mushrooms. Still, he had the gold on the table before him, giving him really no reason why he couldn’t at least go out and have a look. He gave a nod. “All right, Peirte. I’ll go and check it out for you. But I’m not doing it for Prince Keiran, I’m doing it because of your generosity.”

  “Proper thing, Ivan. Just don’t go around telling anyone about it. I’m sure you can see how embarrassing it would be for me if I was proven wrong. On the other hand, if I’m right, I still don’t want anyone to know that I pointed you in that direction. The vision came from God, I’m just the messenger. I don’t want the focus to be on me. You know how it is. The rest of the gold showing up is contingent on you keeping quiet about it,” Peirte said, keeping up a happy exterior, though it wasn’t an act for once. He picked up the empty bag and tied it to his belt again. “And do see to it that when you return from the trip, that you go straight to Keiran before you do anything else.”

  “I can keep a secret,” he replied, nodding and picking up another coin.

  Peirte got up and moved around the table. He placed a hand on the huntsman’s shoulder and leaned down, whispering into his ear. “You have nothing to lose. Besides, think of the business you will receive afterward, when word gets out that you are the one that found the first white stag in a century? Surely, that will account for something.”